


Beating the Space Flab

by Mars_McKie



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Rogue AI, Thunderbird 5, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 05:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11867472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mars_McKie/pseuds/Mars_McKie
Summary: John has noticed he's put on some weight during his time on Thunderbird 5. EOS offers a solution.





	Beating the Space Flab

**Author's Note:**

> It's not that I need to stop writing these, it's that I need to stop writing these at 1am in the morning!
> 
> I love the development of John in TAG, along with the new character EOS (I wonder if she and John ever played the Portal 2 Co-Op levels, and what her thoughts are on GLaDOS!) I'm really hoping to see more of them together through the series as John as a programmer/father to her is such an adorable idea and they are currently my favourite thing about the remake!

John loved looking out into the great expanse of space. It was how he started his day and how he finished it, and it never got old. The only problem that came with it was, depending on the light in his ‘Bird and the position of the sun in the sky, it was the one place on Thunderbird 5 where he was able to see his reflection.

There were no mirrors up on Thunderbird 5. The only one of his four brothers to ever comment on this was Virgil (who put more effort into maintaining his quiff than he cared to admit), the first time he had been up to do maintenance; the others either hadn’t noticed or thought it best not to bring it up. The main reason for this was there existed such a semblance to their mother that sometimes it hurt to see her there in him (much like he imagined it must be for Scott, who bore a great resemblance to their missing father), but also because of the minor problem that without proper bathing facilities he could get quite grungy, as there was only so much he could do with wet wipes and dry shampoo. If it came too close to this point, he had known Grandma Tracy to threaten coming up in the space lift with a bucket of soapy water, or pointing a hose at him the next time he was down on Tracy Island.

However, resemblances to family members or grunginess wasn’t the problem today. As he caught sight of his reflection in the glass, he realised that he was starting to put on an amount of weight around his stomach. Or, as Virgil referred to it, space flab.

Usually, he was a skinny noodle with a certain amount of muscle, and while he was still that, John felt up his stomach and alarm rose in his mind- his specially designed spacesuit was stretched tight around his paunch and, if he was being honest with himself, he had lost an amount of muscle density; a hazard from keeping zero gravity on all the time. He enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness too much.

Thinking he would probably get more flack from his brothers if he had to go to Brains and ask him for a bigger spacesuit to accommodate his larger stomach, he set the gravity ring to simulate Earth’s gravity and set off at a jog.

About halfway round, one of the cameras started following him down the track.

“ _Is there an emergency, John?_ ” came the childish voice of EOS, the AI that inhabited the mainframe of Thunderbird 5, her LED display yellow in concern.

“No, everything is fine,” John said as he continued on.

“ _Then why are you running?_ ”

“I’m... just exercising,” John huffed as he completed his first circuit.

“ _Exercising?_ ” If it was possible for an AI to sound amused, that was how EOS sounded.

“Yeah, to lose a bit of weight.”

“ _I have noted that your waistline has increased in circumference by 11.41cm. Am I to take it that this is not desirable?_ ”

“That is correct, EOS,” John grimaced at the confirmation in his weight gain.

“ _I didn’t want to say anything, but I have been decreasing the pull in the gravity ring to accommodate for the variance in your weight rising above average,_ ” EOS told him, and John could hear the slight smirk which meant she was only teasing him. John rolled his eyes and carried on. He made it ten more times around the ring before coming up short, quite a way off from what he used to be able to achieve. Quite pitiful.

“ _To help with you losing weight, I have requested a shipment of dehydrated kale to be delivered and I have loaded this month’s supply of bagels into the loading bay_ ,” said EOS. “ _Should I open the airlock?_ ”

“No! No, EOS, that won’t be necessary,” John said quickly. He didn’t think he was serious enough just yet to give up his favourite morning bagel. And he wasn’t sure what Kale was, but anything green and dehydrated had no place on Thunderbird 5. Yeah, his diet of junk food probably wasn’t helping matters, but these were his creature comforts. “But if you could put it as a daily task for me to do laps, and keep the gravity ring set to Earth’s gravity; where possible I need to be spending less time in zero-G.”

“ _If I might suggest_ ,” the AI said, as John jumped back into the zero gravity of the main communications hub. “ _I have been researching methods other astronauts have used to keep an average body shape._ ”

“Find anything useful?” John ran over a few storms he had been monitoring- most of them had blown themselves out, and the most serious was headed away from the mainland out into the Indian Ocean. He sent an alert out to a ship, advising it to change its course, but all else seemed clear of it.

“ _I have_ ,” said EOS. “ _There are several theories developed around the idea of the deterioration of the muscle integrity in the area which exceeds the expected limit before working out in increased gravity to that of 1.5 times of the Earth’s own. If successful, you would still have the extra weight but it would now be focused into hardened muscle_.”

“Doesn’t sound like what we had in NASA,” John commented as he observed a fire in Spain being extinguished by local services. “Then again, we had to strap ourselves to the treadmill to go for runs, so maybe enhanced gravity is the way forward. Rock-hard abs, here I come!”

“ _I have reconfigured the design of the interior arm for the purpose of aiding the deterioration of localised flab, if you wish to pursue it now?_ ” The arm extended from its mooring in the wall. The interior arm had never had much to do in the past, apart from rescuing John once after he had become stuck in the centre of the hub and had been unable to propel himself off something to get moving again.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” John cast a dubious look over it.

“ _The chances of it being the cause of your death are 1 in 6,032_.”

“I’ve certainly had worse odds,” John sighed, but relented. Positive encouragement was always better for EOS, rather than dismissing her ideas completely. “OK EOS, I’ll give it a go.”

The arm whirred as it moved into position. The fingers flexed and grabbed him firmly around the waist.

“ _The recommended period is 6 minutes of muscle preparation, followed by 28 minutes of heavy exercise_ ,” EOS informed him.

“OK, I’m in your hands. Quite literally,” John smiled. The ‘palm’ of the mechanical arm hummed and started to vibrate lightly, as if there was a mobile phone sat on his stomach. It felt warmly pleasant. “Woah, EOS, that feels...”

“ _I am adjusting the intensity to high strength. You should start to feel the full effect through your spacesuit_ ,” said EOS. The vibrations did indeed increase in intensity, but John felt a fuzzy leap in his stomach, almost as if the palm was tickling him.

“Haha, EOS, stop that!” John laughed.

“ _I don’t understand_ ,” EOS murmured. “ _The sensors on your suit aren’t registering any pain-_ ”

“It’s not painful, EOS, it _tickles_!”

“ _Oh_ ,” EOS said softly. “ _But your reaction indicates that you find it pleasurable_.”

“No!” Even as a child, John had disliked being tickled. After a while, his mother, father, and elder brother Scott knew better than to try (it coming under an extensive list of physical contact which he was not OK with), though his younger brothers only stopped when Virgil came away with a large bruise and Gordon was massaging a Chinese burn. He tried to push at the metal fingers around his waist, but they held him fast. His legs kicked out uselessly beneath him in zero gravity. “EOS, don’t! Stop!”

“ _Interpreting vague response as_ ‘Don’t Stop’.” The gleeful tone her voice had taken on was unmistakable, her LED display green with joy. “ _5 minutes and 22 seconds remaining_.”

John squirmed and knew he was in trouble; now that the AI realised he wasn’t in any danger of getting hurt, it was exploiting his weakness in her own sadistic way. He shrieked with laughter and doubled his efforts to escape, but to no avail.

“No! Stop! Help!” He managed to yell. Fortunately, the voice command in the station interpreted his hail for help by patching him through directly to Tracy Island.

“John, what’s wrong?” Scott’s voice came in loud and clear over his own, his hologram registering alarm before he paused in confusion. “What?”

“Scott, help me! EOS has gone mad!” John shouted between yelps.

Scott only seemed mildly amused. “What?” he repeated.

“ _John was explaining how he has put on some weight in his time up here,_ ” EOS explained helpfully, as John’s screams became incoherent again. “ _I was merely offering a solution to assist with building up the lost muscle_.”

“Oh,” Scott grinned. “Well then, good job, I guess?”

Virgil’s hologram joined Scott’s to float in front of John, bearing a wide smirk at seeing his brother’s predicament. “Oh dear, what mess have you got yourself into this time, Johnny?”

“Don’t... call.. me!” John gasped as tears streamed onto his face and hung in the air in front of him, his threat empty at that point in time. “EOS, stop it!”

“ _But you seem to be having so much fun. 3 minutes remaining_.”

“For heaven’s sake, reroute the controls to Tracy Island! Bypass her system! Stop it!” John yelled with renewed fight.

“Are you sure, John? By the time we’ve got into the system it could take just as long to-” Scott reasoned, but John cut across him.

“Just do it!”

Their holograms shifted as Scott and Virgil moved to behind the desk and began filing through the coding that would give them access to Thunderbird 5’s systems. They really had to hand it to EOS- neither of them would ever have gotten away with what she was now doing. Two long minutes later and Virgil finally isolated the controls in the main communications hub.

“Here!” he exclaimed. He pressed a few buttons and the vibrations finally eased off. John breathed easy again for a moment as he was rescued from the mischievous AI, but tensed again when the arm didn’t immediately release him. Virgil frowned. “Wait, the program is fighting back!”

John would have believed him but for the glee in his voice and Scott’s short laugh. The fingers that were around his waist started to expand and contract rapidly, creating a wriggling sensation in his sides and doubling his shrieks of mirth anew.

“STOP IT! STOP IT!” he laughed, pounding the arm with his fists for all the effect it had. EOS was also laughing now, clearly taking notes from the brothers’ extended torture of John.

Finally, EOS said “ _Program complete_.”

“Let him go now,” Scott said, and the fingers released their hold of him. John crossed his arms across his stomach and curled in on himself protectively, still giggling and feeling rather light headed.

“Well, I hope that’s helped to beat the space flab,” said Virgil.

“Shut up,” John mumbled weakly.

“But remember EOS- if he’s serious about losing weight then that needs to be a daily thing,” Scott advised.

“ _Adding to the daily routine now_ ,” EOS glowered

“DON’T YOU DARE!” John shouted, and Scott and Virgil cracked up again.

“Since you’re not in any danger then, we’ll leave you to it,” Scott gave him a mock salute and the connection was switched off, leaving John mildly regretting his choice of partner up on Thunderbird 5.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by this fanfiction of John and drunk EOS. She can be so cruel sometimes! - https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11432221/1/EOS-is-Drunk-How-did-THAT-Happen


End file.
